Abstract
Crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) is used for power supply electric wires and cables: its superior electrical characteristics and thermostability are fine. But, the XLPE has a tridimensional closslinked structure, which can hardly be delinked to be re-formable material. Round 40% of the waste XLPE is thermally recycled, but the remainder is burnt out or landfilled. We searched out appropriate conditions of heat and shear for XLPE, thereby turning waste XLPE to re-formable polyethylene. This recycled material displays desirable characteristics, namely, more or less 1% of gel content, melt mass-flow rate (MFR) 0.1-30g/10min at 190C. Notably, it turns out that the recycled material is slightly wider in molecular weight distribution than and the same in short chain branch as polyethylene.
